INTERVIEW: AC Slater

AC Slater is a busy man! Working on his own label, Party Like Us, as well as staying tight with the infamous NY based Trouble n' Bass crew while simultaneously travelling the world and blasting dance floors with his own brand of bass music. We caught up with him in a fifteen minute window of relative calm to talk music, clubs, genres and shameless self promotion.

For those who don't know you, who are you and what are you about?

I'm AC Slater. I'm from Brooklyn New York, Trouble and Bass crew. I'm a bass DJ, I play all kinds of bass music… I don't think you could narrow me down to one genre, just high energy kind of music.

So you moved semi-recently.

Yeah, I moved to LA from New York last january.

Do you think this changed the music you make, it's typically a pretty different scene right?

Completely different scene, yeah. It's pretty crazy how different it is. I love NY, it's pretty much my favourite city in the world, but I was coming over to L.A. a lot for gigs etc. and hanging out with a lot of my friends over here, a lot of producer friends and there just seemed to be that community here. Like in a three block radius, all these producers worked and lived, and I was really inspired, so I kinda one day just decided to move out here and be a part of it. I mean in my building there's Dillon Francis and Dave Nada, the building next has 12th Planet…it's really cool.

I heard you say in an interview a while back that there was once a time when you would get told off by club promoters for playing dubstep. Times have certainly changed, what's your take on it all - not just the rise of Dubstep, but dance music as a whole?

It's pretty amazing, I mean I'm an older guy, I remember years and years and years ago when people didn't even know what it [EDM] was outside of commercials and stuff. I kind of came up in that world, and to see it at where it is now is pretty freakin' amazing. The climate is just crazy. In America especially, I mean down there you've always had a sort of larger scene with all the festivals and everything, but here we've had the festivals that have kind of grown over the years. If you go to somewhere like Las Vegas now, it's almost like Ibiza without the beach.

I heard that Ajax once had a beautiful female friend of his charm her way behind the DJ decks at Fabric to give his demo CD to Erol Alkin, only to see him frisbee it across the dance floor. As an up and comer, did you have any funny experiences similar to this?

Nothing like that, that's pretty crazy! I've had people knock over my laptop, things like that. If you're playing a smaller club, it's definitely more intimate and you're a lot closer to everyone, people tend to get fucked up and do stupid shit. I've had people throw beer on me. Not even like aggressively, just fucking raging.

Your label, Party Like Us, is going strong. Where do you see 2013 taking it?

ACS: I've just released my first major EP in a couple years, I just put it out on Party Like Us, and that's going really well right now. We've just signed a lot of new artists who all seem to be blowing up in their own way. A lot of new age producers just doing a lot of different shit. 2013 we're going to launch our merch store, lots of t-shirts, party supplies, lighters, bottle openers etc. But I want to put out a lot of new music on Party Like Us, so I'm going to kind of split between Trouble n' Bass and Party Like Us . This year I want to take the label up and I mean in 2012 alone we've gained a huge following, it's really cool. I'm really happy with the label right now, I can only see it getting bigger and I can't wait to start doing really different projects, like out of the box projects. But yeah, I think 2013 is going to be really good.

Trap seems to be like the new dubstep over here, it's really blowing up. Is it the same in the states?

Yeah, it's pretty much taken over here, you can't really walk down the street without hearing it. I think it's a pretty natural progression from where dub step went, I think what American's did to dub step as far as taking it so far and making it super heavy and extreme, it's certainly natural for people to kind of pull it back and chill it out a little bit. Or not chill it out, but strip it down a little more and just re-invent it. Maintaining the energy of electronic music with the attitude of trap.

With the rise of social media, there are so many avenues in which to get your name out these days. What's the weirdest and/or most shameful form of self promotion you've undertaken?

Haha, uuuh, I don't know man. I don't even think about it, like when I'm posting shit online it's whatever pops into my head. I'm sure I've posted a lot of dumb shit, definitely taken some weird pictures.

Haha, never called up a radio station to request your own song?

Oooh, no but that's a good idea man! I got really shameful today promoting myself, one of my songs is like number 13 on Beatport and I'm trying to get it into the top ten, so I posted on my Facebook asking everyone to buy it…that's pretty shameful, but fuck it. I don't care.

What's your advice to any young up and coming producers out there?

Just use as much shameful self promotion as you can and you'll make it!

Amen! Thanks for taking the time to talk with us.

Yeah it was good talking to you, see you in Melbourne.

Words by Chevy Long

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